I often receive e-mails asking for my source material. Where did I learn
that Athena and Medusa are flip sides of the same coin? How do I know
that the fairy tale 'Beauty and the Beast' descended from the myth about
Cupid and Psyche? What makes me think that Christmas has more to do with
the calendar than it does with religion? And the most significant question
as far as I am concerned, is religion an artifact of Homo sapiens' symbolic
brain?

I began comparing religions when I was still a teenager so it is impossible
to reconstruct my personal bibliography. I can list some of my most significant
sources, but much of the knowledge I have came in bits and pieces. For
instance, I know that writing a wish on a piece of paper, then tying the
paper on a tree during the moon festival is an ancient oriental custom,
but I don't know which book I read that contained that information. Like
a detective, I have pieced together most of the things I write about from
diverse fragments.

However, my sources are rarely obscure. For instance, Herodotus named
Athena as the same goddess as Medusa. Artifacts from North Africa depict
icons that clearly trace Athena/Medusa to a calendar goddess that represented
duality of destructive/nurturing of the sun. By the time Athena/Medusa
is talked about by ancient Greeks, she has become a daughter of the sea/sky
god Zeus as Poseidon. I didn't have to learn Greek or Latin to learn these
details. I didn't have to do anything other than read sources from my
local library and keep a list of the things I learned.

I have learned one archaic language over the years, however, which is
indispensable in understanding ancient cultures. That language is made
up of symbols, icons, monuments, and decorations. For instance, once I
was at a museum in Koln, Germany. I saw many artifacts that I was familiar
with from art and archeology books. Small images, statuettes and paraphernalia
pertaining to gods such as Zeus and Dionysus decorated drinking cups,
lamps, and other small common items. However, on the second floor where
a Roman forum had been recreated with placement of artifacts, was a gigantic
statue of the Earth Goddess. She was surrounded by huge stone sphinxes
that were clearly female in spite of intentional damage to their breast
region. It did not take any expertise to realize that the statue of this
goddess was extremely important to this Roman settlement. No written word
could have more clearly explained this statue's meaning that her size
and presentation did.

For those who are interested in seeking information out for themselves,
there are several sources that I can recommend, but they aren't easy reading,
nor can they be taken at face value. Jane Harrison was the preeminent
scholar of oriental religions from a hundred years ago. She wrote for
an audience of other scholars, so her books are difficult. She also wrote
at a time when Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution was being contorted
to fit all areas, scientific or not. Her contemporary, Sir James Frazer
wrote 'The Golden Bough' which was a world wide research effort on ancient
religions. Both these authors, in spite of their genii, shared the same
flaw. Both of these distinguished scholars believed that religion evolved
also as people evolved. They were simply wrong. That doesn't mean that
I am willing to throw out their lifetime works of translation and documentation
of ancient and foreign cultures. I simply filter their conclusions through
more modern knowledge.

I know from modern science that humans have not evolved at all in the
last 40,000 years. The brain of the ancient Summerian is the same as the
modern brain. So when reading any source, including a genius such as Harrison,
I am wary of cultural prejudices.

Shakespeare is another resource for obscure fragments. At the time he
wrote, England was in the middle of life and death religious disagreements.
A standard middle class education of the time consisted of reading ancient
philosophers and poets in their original language. Because of religious
intolerance, Shakespeare chose the safer path and used Greek and Roman
mythology as a basis for many of his plays. 'Coriolanus' is a variation
of Hercules saga, and that play contains many references that hint at
the back story of Hercules. Many of his other plays contain fragments
of archaic beliefs and practices. Generally, Shakespeare plays are so
well footnoted that is it easy to find the references.

Because I studied English literature in college, I have run across a
lot of enlightening footnotes in prose and poetry. This is how I learned
that 'royal purple' is not the same color as Tinky Winky. In poetry, royal
purple refers to the color of blood. Royal purple was a sacred and symbolic
color. When you see reference to it or to any shade of red or blood-brown,
it is possible that a sacrificial hero is being discussed.

So in light of that information, reconsider Agamemnon's sin of pride
when he walked on the red carpet. His death was inevitable, not because
he violated some supernatural sense of decorum, but because he identified
himself as a sacrificial year king.

There are several books that I always go back to when I sort information
into essays.
Following is a list of sources that are an important part of conclusions
that I draw.
'The White Goddess' by Robert Graves.
'The Golden Bough' by Sir James Frazer.
'Themis' and 'Prolegomena' by Jane Harrison.
Various books about Greek, Roman, Egyptian and East Indian mythologies,
dictionaries, lists of holidays, archeology and anthropology books, biology,
linguistics, and ancient art and artifacts all contain important parts
of understanding religion.

The basic question I am trying to answer is this: Why is symbolism such
an integral part of the human brain, and how does symbolism contribute
to our species' ability to thrive?